Flock shock rocks cop cam vendor as protests mount

A mischief-maker in a Darth Vader suit recently endorsed Flock at a city council meeting, and it has not helped the company's fortunes. Around the US, citizens have been protesting and sometimes vandalizing the company's network of surveillance cameras. And the advocacy has caused some governments to change course. Government …

[Paul Crawford]

I wonder how many protestors against such surveillance still use Facebook?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

I know. It's like these Karens who object to stop and strip search on the street but happily shower naked

[elsergiovolador]

and let the spider in the corner watch!!!

[David Hicklin]

> and let the spider in the corner watch!!!

Nah its peeking from the overflow outlet (Dave Allen sketch, I loved hid shows !)

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing

That US tech considers a company like Flock, whose whole business model is cloning what the Chinese have been doing for years, is considered innovative.

[NoneSuch]

If Flock cameras played cute kitten videos there would be zero outrage and multiple sighs of "awwwwwwww....."

[Gene Cash]

Language

You know how Eskimo has 60 words for "snow"[1]?

Well American has no words for "privacy"

Seriously, if you tried to explain GDPR to the average American on the street, he would not understand why such a law exists.

You have to smack 'em in the face with things like "this datacenter will cause your electricity bill to double" or "this camera will let your friend's cop ex-boyfriend stalk all of y'all"

[1] it doesn't but let's not have facts get in the way

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Language

It's every American business's constitutional right to record camera footage of a Jewish children center pool and use in a sales demo.

[retiredFool]

One local case

My city doesn't use flock but some of the neighboring ones do. Pfluggerville just cancel'ed their contract. They put garbage bags over them until they are removed. Their council cited unrestricted access as the reason. So one more dripped away. Hoping for a tsunami.

[DS999]

I am liking the grassroots action

Against Flock and datacenters. The US has been tilting towards fascism in the past couple years, it seems like a lot of people are not liking the idea of a government owned and paid for by corporations.

[SundogUK]

Re: I am liking the grassroots action

I am liking the grassroots action against Flock but the idea that the US has been tilting towards fascism in the past couple year is utter fucking nonsense.

[LogicGate]

Re: I am liking the grassroots action

You are right,

The US of A has gon full facist already.

It started with 9-11. Bin Laden's goal was to make the US implode. He succeeded:

Patriot act

TSA

Iraq-War

State legislated torture

Spying on US citicens

With P47 Felon we can now add to it:

Secret police roaming the streets and arresting or killing people

Consentration camps

Retooling the Department of Justice into an enforcer operation

A suppressed freedom of the press

A political court system judging by party alignment, not law

Massive corruption at the highest level

Realignment with Russia, North Korea and China

Purges within all government agencies including defence

Shal I go on?

[Chinamissing]

Re: I am liking the grassroots action

Totally agree with you on this but find it odd that 2 of your named countries (NK and China) are Communist/Socialist and not Fascist, the very antithesis politically of fascism.

[LogicGate]

Re: I am liking the grassroots action

NK and China are communist in the name only.

It is like saying that East Germany was a democracy because it called itself Deutsche Demokratische Republik, and that the Nazis were socialists (which is a surprisingly much used MAGA talking point) because the called themselves National-Sozialistischer Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.

Anyway: allignments come in many shapes and colors. Remember which two alligned political systems invaded Poland in 1939?

[DS999]

Re: I am liking the grassroots action

The best example of that is North Korea - the democratic people's republic of North Korea. They are none of those things.

[Casca]

Re: I am liking the grassroots action

I will give them North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I am liking the grassroots action

I agree. It's already fully there, it's way past "tilting".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I am liking the grassroots action

Right wing muppet says what?

[xyz]

Re: I am liking the grassroots action

Them sovereign citizens were right!

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange animals, these Americans

Out of control fascist style government, corrupt President, international sex scandals, poorly managed economy and useless wars.

But, hey, security cameras! That’s too much!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Strange animals, these Americans

"But, hey, security cameras! That’s too much!"

Seriously False Logic(TM) here.

Out of those things the cameras are the only one which *can* be changed with grassroot movement. Unless you assume The People will win a civil war: That won't happen.

That is literally what Republicans are trying to do: Have a civil war and kill or enslave all the non-Republicans. Army already is happy with fascism, so they'll anything they're being told to do.

When supreme court gives "president" free hands to do anything the moron wants to do, there's literally nothing ordinary people can do: That fight is already lost.

Even elections are 'guarded' by modern versions of brownshirts, who kill people on the street because they like to do that. Fascist won and you obey or get killed, literally. Only 'right' people may vote in September, so it will get only worse.

But of course the pampered AC doesn't understand any of that.

Or that UK is already in the same position, when a protest group is declared a terrorist organization, because a counry committing genocide (=Israel) owns UK management (literally) and does not allow criticism. Literal *talk* is too much: No freedom of speech in UK.

[Neil Barnes]

Comrade, of course you're guilty.

The cameras merely help use decide what you're guilty of.

[just4this]

Re: Comrade, of course you're guilty.

Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

Imagine what he could have done with 24/7 video surveillance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flock support privacy (well, sort of)

I saw a video on YouTube the other day about a man named Bob Sklar who is being stalked all over the USA by officers from his local police force..

A number of times he has been able to get lists of all the searches in the Flock database about his registration.

Originally the lists included which law enforcement agency and which officer had made the search and a "reason" (which was often just his surname).

The most recent lists no longer include either the details of the LEA or the officer.

Apparently law enforcement officers have complained that including details of who made the search was a breach of their privacy!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtUkCvF3fa4

[Anonymous Coward]

in the UK however

Too many Muppets demand "safety", "think of the children", "if men have to give up their so called freedom's so I can *feel* safe and secure then so be it"

The UK long ago turned itself into a penal colony, littered with surveillance cameras, massive unaccountable govt and private sector "partnership " databases with reams of redacted or just plain undisclosed information held within, with no right of removal.

Where find yourself disabled or unemployed and you will rapidly find out what prisoners in a reeducation camp feel like, where payments get stopped for weeks on end while "decision makers" look at the case, where there is no direct contact with said decision makers and only vague comments are made about what has caused the matter to be escalated are given. Where those on the phone are deliberately untrained and utterly clueless, those via the "journal" system don't answer enquiries for 7-14 days or more even in the face of "urgent" requests for help.

Where the DWP has decided you are guilty of something but fumes and bristles at having to convince a judge of this guilt, where the DWP makes it clear it views this as unnecessary and "enabling" criminals.

Where they have tried (and thus far failed) to enact workfare or as it's usually known unpaid work aka penal servitude aka SLAVERY.

I'm sure tagging orders for those who need social security will come along soon enough, though with all the cameras and facial recognition, I'm sure the DWP will spend hundreds of billions chasing what it admits incredibly reluctantly is "levels of fraud so low as to be unmeasurable" and instead mixes its own massive incompetence induced error rate in with "fraud" to generate big scary numbers to leak to the press.

Incompetence so glaring that they have to be informed of basic arithmetic errors, then they deny it, you push the issue, they then say it will have to be looked into and someone will come back to you in 7-14 working days, whereupon they grudgingly admit their mistake, send you an incorrectly calculated repayment demand, you highlight another error and show your working, they then again concede reluctantly, issue another repayment demand but "forget" to cancel the first repayment demand.

Id normally say never attribute to malice as can be explained by incompetence but the DWP appear to have weaponised incompetence

[LogicGate]

Re: in the UK however

But you managed to get out of the EU, so you do not have to be bothered with the pesky "privacy-red-tape".

Well done!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: in the UK however

If by DWP you mean de the Department of Works & Pensions, I have been there once. I'd say that glaciers move faster, even before global warming. It's as if the people who work there have their clockspeed reduced by a full factor. It's kinda scary, I never knew people could be that slow and it appears not even deliberate..

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

Re: in the UK however

A fair amount of the problem in the UK is the way that the state seems to want to entangle as many citizens as it can in pointless red tape. Consider if you will the plight of people on low to minimum wages. Very often they will be paying tax on these wages then claiming benefits which repay that tax, possibly with a little on top.

An easier way to go would be to hugely increase the tax-free allowance such that the low paid simply do not pay taxes at all. That reduces costs because the circular take-then-give process is is removed along with all the inherent bureaucratic costs. Similarly we know that children do better when the family contains two parents, so permitting married or civil partnered couples to pool their tax-free allowances would greatly favour this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: in the UK however

"That reduces costs because the circular take-then-give process is is removed along with all the inherent bureaucratic costs. "

Obviously. But it's never about costs: It's about *power* to kick anyone below you to the head. There's literally no other reason to any of it.

Fascism, if you want, in form of faceless bureucracy which is not responsible of anything. Most definitely it not an accident, it is designed to be that.

[just4this]

Re: in the UK however

I pretty much agree with, what I think is, the points you are making.

I suspect you or someone close to you have been the victim of Atos doing the DWP’s dirty work.

“find out what prisoners in a reeducation camp feel like” I read that as “through no fault of their own became unemployed and were forced to attend patronising ‘how to make a CV and apply for a job’ classes once a week in order to continue to receive benefits you were entitled to and may well have been a fraction of what you had paid in National Insurance over you’re working career.

“payments get stopped for weeks on end while "decision makers" look at the case” Stopped? nope. The degrading term they used for ‘stopped’ was ‘sanctioned’.

“Where the DWP has decided you are guilty of something but fumes and bristles at having to convince a judge of this guilt,” What? You dared to use the ‘appeal this decision’ option that was on the letter they sent you after they made a poorly informed decision? There is plenty of evidence that Atos’ default decision was to deny first and hope an appeal never followed. Putting ‘Atos’ and ‘DWP’ into a search engine will provide lots of further reading on that matter.

“Incompetence so glaring that they have to be informed of basic arithmetic errors” Any one can make an arithmetic error. It takes a special kind of stupid to ‘sanction’ payments simply because you never turned up for one of the afore mentioned classes that was still three weeks into the future. I sorted that particular fuck up out for a friend who was struggling at the time.

I have a family member who has to attend a medical twice a year to verify they are still entitled to benefits. You know, just in case her cerebral palsy has cleared up!

As stated earlier, I agree with the points you are making. I think you came over a little ‘angry shouty’ and that may be the reason for the downvotes. Not from me though.

[barronmusk]

Privacy Matters More Than People Think

The discussion here is a good reminder that privacy is becoming increasingly important online and offline. People should know what information is being collected, who can access it, and how long it is retained.

The same principle applies to online creator platforms such as FeetClub: creators should always check privacy settings, understand how their content and account information are handled, and avoid sharing unnecessary personal details.

Convenience is useful, but privacy should not be an afterthought.